1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an ink set for inkjet recording and an inkjet recording method.
2. Background Art
Since inkjet printers are relatively quiet, enjoy low running costs, and are capable of easily printing color images, they are now widely used at home as the output device of digital signals.
In recent years, inkjet technologies have been appealing in business field of, for example, display, posters, and signboards in addition to home use.
As the ink for inkjet recording for use in business fields, solvent-based inkjet ink containing a resin dissolved in an organic solvent as a vehicle or ultraviolet-curable inkjet ink using a polymerizable monomer as its main component have been widely used.
However, a large amount of the solvent of the solvent-based inkjet ink evaporates into air, which is not preferable in terms of burden on environment. Moreover, some ultraviolet curable inkjet ink have skin sensitization potential. In addition, since an ultraviolet ray irradiator built in a printer is expensive, the application field of the solvent-based inkjet is limited.
In this backdrop and considering it is less burden on the environment, inkjet technologies using an aqueous ink widely used at home have been developed for industrial use.
However, such aqueous inks have disadvantages with regard to image quality in comparison with a solvent-based inkjet ink.
One of these is that since water has a strong surface tension, ink droplets do not easily spread widely on non-permeating media made of non-porous materials such as vinyl chloride, acrylic, and polyethyleneterephthalate for use in business purpose, so that voids (gaps) appear in images and surface smoothness lowers. That is, it is difficult to form an even film. One way to solve this problem is a method using a surfactant to lower surface tension so as to make ink droplets easily spread on non-permeating media.
In addition, since water in aqueous inks has to be evaporated, the aqueous ink is inferior about quick dryness in comparison with solvent-based inks so that image blur tends to occur to formed images. In the case of high performance printing in particular, plenty of ink is discharged at once, which easily accelerates such image blur. To solve this problem, methods of heating images during printing are disclosed.